Haitian Creole orthography and phonology
Haitian Creole has a phonemic orthography with highly regular spelling, except for proper nouns and foreign words. According to the official standardized orthography, Haitian Creole is composed of the following 32 sounds : a, an, b, ch, d, e, è, en, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, ng, o, ò, on, ou, oun, p, r, s, t, ui, v, w, y, z. Of note is the absence of letters c, q, u and x. Letter k is to be used for the sounds of letters c and q. Letter u is always associated with another letter (ou, oun, ui), while letter i (and its sound) is used to replace the single letter u in French words. As for letter x, its sound is produced by using the combination of letters k and s, k and z, or g and z. | valign="top" | |} *There are no silent letters in Haitian Creole. *All sounds are always spelled the same, except when a vowel carries a grave accent before , which makes it an oral vowel instead of a nasal vowel (e.g. for and for ; = , but = ; = , but = ). *When immediately followed by a vowel in a word, the digraphs denoting the nasal vowels (an, en, on, and sometimes oun) are pronounced as an oral vowel followed by n''. *There is some ambiguity in the pronunciation of the high vowels ''i and ou when followed in spelling by n'': common words such as ''moun ("person") and machin ("car") end with consonantal /n/, while very few words, mostly adopted from African languages, contain nasalized high vowels (e.g. houngan "vodou priest"). Haitian orthography debate The first technical orthography for Haitian Creole was developed in 1940 by Ormonde McConnell. It was later revised with the help of Frank Laubach, resulting in the creation of what is known as the McConnell-Laubach orthography. The McConnell–Laubach orthography received substantial criticism from members of the Haitian elite. Haitian scholar Charles Pressoir critiqued the McConnell-Laubach orthography for its lack of front rounded vowels because of their highly symbolic value in Kreyòl. Another criticism was of the broad use of the letters /w/ and /y/. Pressoir argued that these letters looked "too American". This criticism of the “American look” of the orthography was shared by many educated Haitians, who also criticized its association with Protestantism. The last of Pressoir’s criticisms was that “the use of the circumflex accent to mark nasalized vowels” treated nasal sounds differently from the way they are represented in French and, therefore, would inhibit the learning of French. The official creation of the orthography was essentially an articulation of the language ideologies of those involved and therefore brought out political and social tensions between competing groups. A large portion of this tension lay in the ideology held by many that the French language is superior, which led to resentment of the language by some Haitians and an admiration for it from others. This orthographical controversy boiled down to an attempt to unify a conception of Haitian national identity, a highly politicized and controversial topic of which there are many competing views. References